ARTICLES ABOUT ILLINOIS NATIONAL GUARD BY DATE - PAGE 4

Illinois National Guard officials are surveying the morale of soldiers recently deployed to Afghanistan, the field commander for the recently returned troops said Wednesday. Brig. Gen. Steven Huber, who commanded Illinois Guard and other soldiers assigned to Task Force Phoenix, said the Guard is reaching out to soldiers to ask about morale, while also watching re-enlistment rates and soldiers' moods for signs of fatigue. "The impact is felt on many fronts -- these are citizen soldiers, so you're talking about employers, families and everything else," Huber said in an interview.

Phone calls by wary Craigslist and eBay buyers to the Illinois National Guard have uncovered an apparent scam by people pretending to be guardsmen eager to sell expensive items before rushing off to deployments. The half-dozen names supplied to the Internet sales site were bogus, the guard said. The items seem dubious too -- like a $15,500 2004 Sea Ray Sundancer motorboat with "74 hours of fresh water on it" supposedly in Springfield, yet mysteriously photographed off a rocky shore with a Texas flag.

Robert A. Jorgensen, 90, of Bradenton, FL, beloved husband of Shirley G.; dear uncle of many nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his three sisters and his two brothers. Mr. Jorgensen was a retired Army Commander for the Illinois National Guard. Visitation Thursday from 10 a.m. until the time of Funeral Services at 11 a.m. at Our Saviour's Lutheran Church, 1234 N. Arlington Heights Rd., Arlington Heights. Interment Mt. Olive Cemetery. Information,www.

Screaming, jumping up and down and waving American flags, a crowd in Crestwood on Thursday welcomed home about 40 Illinois National Guard troops returning from Afghanistan. After a short ceremony at the armory, as soldiers rushed to hug and hold their loved ones, the family of Spec. Simone Robinson sat silently in the front row. Robinson, 21, was the only soldier from her company killed during the yearlong tour. Still, more than two dozen of her family members chose to be at the welcome-home ceremony to greet the unit that became her family away from home.

After a long year in Afghanistan with the Illinois National Guard, Staff Sgt. Tyrone Rettis was happy to be reunited with his Calumet City family Monday morning at Soldier Field -- and antsy to get home. "The first thing I'm going to do is take off this uniform," Rettis said, grinning ear to ear as he stood next to his wife, Omesha. "I love my country, but I've been wearing it for a year." Rettis was among the latest 147 troops to return from the state's largest National Guard deployment since World War II. His unit -- the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 178th Infantry -- was lucky.

When the blaring of sirens heralded the homecoming of Delta Company, family and friends of the National Guard troops burst into celebration Thursday, screaming and running toward the buses as they pulled up to Woodstock's town square. For nearly a year, they had been awaiting this moment, when the soldiers would return from their deployment in Afghanistan. But not all was so joyous: Remaining behind near the band shelter, sobbing together in a solemn clutch, were parents and other relatives of four soldiers who would not be coming home.

Young Afghans with powerful gazes, pausing to watch a passing war machine. Bearded men tilling the soil, their implements ageless. Children playing, in concrete-lined canals or the gaps between crumbling buildings. So often, these are the quick glimpses through which U.S. soldiers see Afghan village life -- captured through the bulletproof glass of their armored vehicles, or in furtive glances stolen on walking patrols meant to show a "presence." For troops from Illinois, the Afghan countryside unfolds through a prism of threat or no threat, and if an impression is shared, it often is bewilderment at a place so alien to lives forged in Algonquin, Plainfield or Macomb.

Through the windows of their armored vehicles, or passing by on foot patrols, U.S. soldiers often get only brief glimpses of Afghan villages and landscapes that can be as bewildering as they are dangerous. Tribune photographer E. Jason Wambsgans and correspondent James Janega are seeing Afghanistan from the soldiers' level, on a weekslong embed with the Illinois National Guard to document the troops' final weeks of deployment. In a photo essay on Page 4, they have captured timeless scenes of daily life -- young Afghans playing in a canal, farmers tending fields and carrying water as they've done for generations, a barber at work in his shop.

Two more Illinois National Guard troops were killed in separate roadside bomb explosions in Afghanistan, the Illinois Department of Military Affairs said in a statement Wednesday. Spec. Chester Hosford, 35, of Ottawa was killed Monday and Spec. Christopher Talbert, 24, of Galesburg died Tuesday. Both were deployed to the 33rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team as part of police mentor teams training Afghan National Police, a department spokeswoman said. Hosford was killed when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb near Konduz, Afghanistan, according to the National Guard.